Miscellaneous Rant
Written on February 21, 2002
I’m in a black mood today and feel the need to vent.
I wonder when people forgot that the Constitution begins with the words “We the people” We seem to have forgotten the definition of the word people. People used to be a collection of individuals with common attributes. Today it is a jumbled mass, faceless and incapable of thought. Politicians used to serve the will of that mass; today they control it. The larger the mass grows, the harder it is to hear the voice of the individuals within it.
Fear controls politics.
Responsibility and freedom rule no longer. People live in fear of all sorts of things today. We fear that we are destroying the planet, not because the evidence supports that conclusion, but because that is what we are continually told. We allow our government to pass increasingly heavy taxes because Social Security or medicare is at stake, instead of forcing them to remove the pork from the budget. People even vote out of fear these days. They vote for the mainstream candidate in the hopes that the bad guy won’t win. Fear even controls our daily lives. People don’t challenge their boss out of fear for their jobs. People don’t discipline their children out of fear of lawsuits and court battles.
We are not a country of sheep, as some may claim, but of ‘possum. We play dead to present the weakest possible target to those we are afraid of. We no longer stand to fight, backed up only by the courage of our convictions. Instead we hide out of fear of retribution.
In today’s world, Whites are made to feel guilty, Blacks are made to feel like victims, Latinos are made to feel like intruders, and Arabs are made to feel like terrorists. Our leaders tell us this. Former President Clinton says without saying that Whites are evil because their ancestors may have owned slaves, President Bush says without saying that Arabs are evil because they practice Islam, Jesse Jackson says without saying to Blacks that even though he achieved on his own, other Blacks cannot. With this daily assault on us, how can we ever expect to react without fear?
I’m in a black mood today and feel the need to vent.
I wonder when people forgot that the Constitution begins with the words “We the people” We seem to have forgotten the definition of the word people. People used to be a collection of individuals with common attributes. Today it is a jumbled mass, faceless and incapable of thought. Politicians used to serve the will of that mass; today they control it. The larger the mass grows, the harder it is to hear the voice of the individuals within it.
Fear controls politics.
Responsibility and freedom rule no longer. People live in fear of all sorts of things today. We fear that we are destroying the planet, not because the evidence supports that conclusion, but because that is what we are continually told. We allow our government to pass increasingly heavy taxes because Social Security or medicare is at stake, instead of forcing them to remove the pork from the budget. People even vote out of fear these days. They vote for the mainstream candidate in the hopes that the bad guy won’t win. Fear even controls our daily lives. People don’t challenge their boss out of fear for their jobs. People don’t discipline their children out of fear of lawsuits and court battles.
We are not a country of sheep, as some may claim, but of ‘possum. We play dead to present the weakest possible target to those we are afraid of. We no longer stand to fight, backed up only by the courage of our convictions. Instead we hide out of fear of retribution.
In today’s world, Whites are made to feel guilty, Blacks are made to feel like victims, Latinos are made to feel like intruders, and Arabs are made to feel like terrorists. Our leaders tell us this. Former President Clinton says without saying that Whites are evil because their ancestors may have owned slaves, President Bush says without saying that Arabs are evil because they practice Islam, Jesse Jackson says without saying to Blacks that even though he achieved on his own, other Blacks cannot. With this daily assault on us, how can we ever expect to react without fear?
posted by Charlie Brown at 18.11.04
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